ABSTRACT
Throughout the world, plants are the basis of human material culture. Most indigenous societies, which traditionally have lacked the metals and synthetic materials ubiquitous in Western society, rely almost entirely on plants for their material needs. The use of plants as containers was even more crucial among cultures that needed to transport water over long distances. Plants can also be used as containers to preserve food. The prominence of fiber plants in indigenous societies can be adduced from the number of plant forms they cultivate and from the richness of the ethnotaxonomy (indigenous classification system) they use to classify them. Economic traffic in plants such as nutmeg has indeed had a profound impact on human cultures. Such plants are used to structure and express the relationship between this life and the next, and many cultures have expressed their conception of humankind's place in the universe with plants.
